Disclaimer: "Detective Conan" belongs to Gosho Aoyama, and "Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon" belongs to Naoko Takeuchi.
This is an alternative story to my other fanfic "Encounter in Venice" and one of the possibilities of what could have happened if Ai had taken the antidote before Shinichi brought down the Organization.
Thanks a lot to my friends and betas Rae (Astarael00) and SN1987a and the Aicoholics on LiveJournal, without whom I would never have started this fic.
FS
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Ghost at Twilight
(edited version)
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"But who is the…"
"But who is the culprit?" you ask your stranger instead. After all, you can't have only imagined Seiya's reaction to Misa's family name. Indefatigable as he is, your precious singer must have investigated Kakyuu's death and found evidence against Ishihara-san although he couldn't guess her motive until he learned that she is Taiki-san's sonnet-loving admirer and "Misa-chan", the girl whom Taiki-san has given a private concert when she was in hospital.
"You're dying to know it," observes your stranger with an amused smile, "but I'm not going to tell you!"
After presenting you his version of the case, he has returned to the place beside you on the bench. The full moon in the night sky above the purple band of light, which hasn't undergone any changes during the last few minutes, is to your eyes a perfect blue. And when he leans over to pull you into his arms with a reassuring grin, what happens is a pas de deux which you two have practised together so often that one single gesture will trigger an automatic response. He and you are locking lips again although it's neither the time nor the place for this sort of pursuit. Or maybe it is the right time and place since the multitude of lanterns and strings of lights in the trees have created the illusion that the stars are tantalizingly within reach. You can easily fool yourself into believing that you only need to climb a cherry tree and extend a hand to touch them.
It's incomprehensible to you how anyone could prefer a one-night stand to an enduring relationship. Kisses and caresses are like wines which age well and will only improve with time. Although you feel so exhausted that you might as well be a woman of Miss Marple's age when Miss Marple solved her final cases and your stranger doesn't look as energetic as he looked last night either (a little more sleep would have done you two good), kissing him has become second nature.
"Why don't you want to tell me?" you ask him with a yawn. You would have loved to lay your head on his lap again, but for some unclear reason, you don't want to lie down at the moment. You're terrified by the idée fixe that you will fall asleep the moment you lie down and close your eyes—because intuition tells you that when you wake up, if you ever wake up, he won't be there.
"Because I wouldn't ever dare to talk down to Shiho Holmes!" He fixes your eyes with a challenging gaze. "Why don't you just deduce the identity of the culprit on your own?"
Seiya is definitely not the normal, nice, manageable man you've been searching for, but since it's a universally known fact that what you get from life is seldom what you expected to receive (and what you're gravitating to is sometimes different from what you think you need), you might as well make the best of it.
"Well, since you're aching for me to give you a demonstration of my razor-sharp deductive reasoning, Moriarty, I'm going to do it!" Putting on your haughtiest smirk, you flip your hair and cringe when you realize how much you must resemble Shortie. "After throwing my detective out of your apartment instead of doing the sensible thing—telling him the truth so that he could help you!—you drank up all the tea and stuffed yourself with whatever Taiki-san had left in your fridge because you hadn't eaten anything for a whole day and were practically starving—"
"No, I was starving, but the fridge was empty because Taiki, too, was affected by our plan to deactivate Kakyuu's life support—and I don't think I'd have been able to keep anything in my stomach that night! I did finish the tea, though, and added a glass of Manzanilla sherry for the calories—"
"You drank wine on an empty stomach?" Although you've only known each other for a day, you have to fight the urge to put him on a healthy diet.
"It was only one glass—and sherry is the perfect wine to drink before a meal!"
"Except that you skipped the meal and the snack!" To your dismay, you realize that yours would have been a tumultuous relationship if it had worked out. You've been together, or rather been separated, for a few hours and you're already bickering about his alcohol consumption. "It's an age-old rule about imbibing alcohol," you insist, "one should never drink on an empty stomach lest one wants to get intoxicated at the speed of a bat out of hell!"
"Nonsense!" Unruly as he is, your would-have-been husband doesn't let himself be guided by you. "I was accustomed to that daily glass of sherry, and even Haruka-san has to admit that I have a very high level of alcohol dehydrogenase! I've never been drunk in my life—in contrast to you!" Pleased about your shocked expression, he flashes you a wicked smirk.
"Tenoh-san has told you!" you chance an inspired guess.
"Of course."
"What a horrible chatterbox! You two are worse than elementary school girls!"
"And you aren't?"
"Touché."
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Since only Mizuno-san or Ishihara-san could have pulled the plug to Kakyuu's life support system unless someone from the outside had managed to enter the private hospital unobserved, you reason that your stranger must have visited either of the two women during his investigation. He could have called on Mizuno-san first because he seemed to know her better than Ishihara Misako—or he could have saved the talk with Mizuno-san for later for the same reasons. Most probably, Seiya visited Ishihara Misako first because Mizuno-san was unlikely to be the culprit, being the owner of the hospital and the doctor who must have been opposed to shutting off life support for Kakyuu, which was why Three Lights planned to deactivate the life support system by themselves.
"You met up with Ishihara Misako because only she could have been the culprit—there was no reason why Mizuno-san should suddenly pull the plug to Kakyuu's life support system, especially since she would have had so many chances to let Kakyuu die without risking the reputation of her own hospital. Did you have to flirt with 'Misa' or to bully her? Anyhow, Misa must have confessed at some point because you wouldn't have dropped the case if she hadn't; and chivalrous as you and your brothers are—even though Yaten-san can hide it well—you three decided to shield Misa by keeping silent on what you knew."
Since he is listening to your deduction with rapt attention but doesn't show any inclination to comment on it, you proceed with your educated (and hopefully lucky) guess. "Luck was on your side since Mizuno-san, after a talk with her daughter Ami, who was a friend of Taiki-san's, decided to withhold her statement about seeing you with the handkerchief in Kakyuu's room. She was even going to hide from the investigators that she had opened the door to Kakyuu's room and noticed that Kakyuu was still alive and the life support was still plugged in during your visit. It seemed like the best solution because Ishihara-san and Three Lights would be suspected but no one would be convicted of homicide. Even Kudo, who had other cases to worry about, indirectly supported you by dropping the investigation."
"Impressive, Miss Holmes!" Seiya regards you with an admiring smile, "although there are a few details you've guessed wrong. I didn't have to flirt with 'Misa' or to bully her—by the time I entered her apartment, she had already worked herself up into a terrible state. She was so nervous that it took me a whole night to calm her down." He blushes at the sight of your disapproving frown. "Of course I didn't do it that way—how often do I have to repeat to you that I hadn't even kissed anyone before you? All I did was talking to her and pouring her nonalcoholic drinks! It was ridiculous since she was Kakyuu's murderer and I thought I'd gladly wring her neck the moment I was sure that she was guilty, but there we were: she seemed honest when she told me that she did it out of pity—and it was hard for me to condemn her for something I'd have almost done myself."
According to Misa, Misa had never even considered pulling the plug to Kakyuu's life support system before she saw how much Seiya and his brothers suffered. Since she was a passionate gardener and was also well versed in flower language, it was easy for her to guess that Seiya was trying to deactivate Kakyuu's life support system but couldn't. Ending Kakyuu's life was an emotional, hasty decision partly driven by her wish to be useful to her favourite idols and partly driven by her empathy with Kakyuu.
Misa saw herself as a martyr, who would sacrifice her future to save Kakyuu from a fate worse than death; and since the alarm didn't even go off when she pulled the plug, she could delude herself into believing that she had received a sign from above, which assured her of the integrity of her action. Without life support, it was only a matter of minutes until Kakyuu died in her sleep. Only after the interrogations, when Misa had returned to her apartment and relived the events of the day once again did Misa realize that she had compromised her principles, ended the life of her patient, and harmed her idols in a moment of mental instability.
"I was incensed at Ishihara-san's actions since it was my task to pull the plug to Kakyuu's life support system and not the task of a fanatic fan, especially since Ishihara-san had also robbed me of the chance to see Kakyuu again. But at the same time, I was convinced that Ishihara-san only wanted to help. She had also suffered so much and was so afraid of Mizuno-san's reaction that I didn't even feel the wish to take revenge on her."
Like Seiya, Mizuno-san didn't feel the need to punish Misa either when Seiya and Misa talked to her. Before she haphazardly ended Kakyuu's life, Ishihara Misako had been a reliable and affectionate nurse, who had gone out of her way to aid the recovery of her patients. Keeping her at the hospital so that she could continue her work and be an inspiration for the less enthusiastic newcomers was probably better than ruining her life and Three Lights' reputation by handing her over to the investigators, who would have had to enforce the law.
Mizuno-san wasn't an automaton—she must have had her own crisis of conscience as well, must have struggled with her burden as a doctor, who wasn't allowed to let her patient die despite knowing the lifelong suffering her patient would have had to endure after waking up. Some people believe that ending a life is the greatest sin and that any suffering was better than death. But believing is not knowing—and even if she were deeply religious (which she isn't, so Seiya claims), Mizuno-san must have doubted. In the end, one will always have to make a choice without knowing the consequences—Mizuno-san might have thought—and sticking to a law or a book other people wrote long ago is far crueler than looking at the present situation and muster enough courage to decide on one's own.
What would have happened if Misa hadn't pulled the plug? The tiny flicker of hope that this case out of all cases could end with an unexplainable miracle—that this should be the one exception which proved the rule, might be the reason why people will keep fighting for happiness against all odds. The darker the future looks, the stronger people will cling to hope, disregarding the voice of reason telling them that Hope, with its enchanting voice and its irresistible smile, might be their adversary and not their ally.
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